heighten
verb
Simple meaning
Make more extreme.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
hytuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈhaɪtən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
Make more extreme; raise in quantity, degree, or intensity
Make (one's senses) more acute
Make more intense, stronger, or more marked
To make high; to raise higher; to elevate.
Increase the height of
“The athletes kept jumping over the steadily heightened bars.”
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Rare
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Make more extreme; raise in quantity, degree, or intensity
Used this way, heighten is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use heighten
- “The tension heightened.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.